


Universe 67

by AndiekHubble96



Category: Project Blue Book (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:49:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24612550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndiekHubble96/pseuds/AndiekHubble96
Summary: The boys take a short cut and run into serious trouble.
Relationships: J. Allen Hynek & Michael Quinn
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	Universe 67

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: Adult language and the tiniest sliver of homosexual attraction.

The dark-haired man stared at the campfire and tried not to think about the old soda bottle a quarter-filled with water resting on the front passenger side floor of the Packard he was leaning against. His lips and tongue were swollen and painfully parched and _oh, how he wanted that water_ —his mind screamed at him to take it, to survive–but he wasn’t one to give in like that. 

  


Not when his partner needed it more. 

  


They’d come to the desert again and that had given Quinn hope. Seeing the stark endlessness stretching to each horizon, with nothing but sagebrush and rocks and the occasional cactus filling the desolate view, Michael Quinn had cheered out loud and shouted at the man in the back seat to wake up. “Doc! Doc! This might be it! C’mon, Doc!” However, when no sound greeted him, Quinn glanced back at his partner in the rear-view mirror and his heart sank. “C’mon, Doc! Wakey-wakey!” he tried again. 

  


Nothing. 

  


“Goddamnit, Hynek! You wake the hell up!” Quinn shouted as loud as he could. The sigh in relief he gave when he saw the Doc’s head shift made his whole chest move up and down. 

  


“Cap’n?”

  


“Yeah, Doc, it’s me. We’ve hit desert again. I need you to take a look and see if you recognize any of the vegetation. Doc? Doc!” But it was no use; Hynek had passed out once more. “Shit! Shit, shit, shit,” Quinn swore, hitting the steering wheel harshly with each word. 

  


. . . 

  


Now, as the firelight flickered and ever-changing shadows danced across his partner’s pale face, Quinn wondered if the Doc was ever going to wake up again. “Just hang on till daylight, Doc,” Michael told him. “If you don’t make it home, you can bet some creep is going to try and snap up that gorgeous wife of yours in a heartbeat. You don’t want that, do you? Jerks pestering Mimi and trying to take advantage of her grief? So, you just hang on and I’ll find us water in the morning. Then we’ll find the gateway and you’ll be back home in time to beat them off _and_ see Joel’s Little League season start.” 

  


Curled up under the ancient emergency blanket, Hynek twitched once and murmured in his sleep. Once Quinn was relatively sure it wasn’t another seizure, he took the other man’s movement as a welcome sign. “Hey, you wouldn’t want to wake up and relieve me at watch here? I’ve gotten pretty tired covering for your ass the last few nights.” Hynek’s only response was to shiver. “No, huh?” Quinn answered for him as he pulled the blanket tighter around Allen. “Well, I’ll let it slide this time. Some of us aren’t spring chickens, after all.” 

  


He chuckled bitterly. “Some shortcut, eh Doc?” he asked, but it was more to himself this time. “Yessir, a real goddamned peach.”

  


. . . 

  


Day after day they would travel up and down that road, always ending up somewhere new, but never home.

  


. . . 

  


Staring at the stars, Michael Quinn tried to ignore how badly he wanted a smoke. He actually had a pack in the glove compartment, but the idea of smoking now with a throat doing double duty as sandpaper most certainly did not appeal. Yet his body still wanted them—how fucked up was that? “Water first,” he told his unresponsive partner. “Then a tall, cold beer. I’m not usually a beer man, but a brewski sounds pretty fine just about now. Maybe one of those foreign brands. Yep, a cold beer, then a steak with plenty of onions and mushrooms and a side of fries maybe, and finally a long soak in a cool tub with a really good glass or two of bourbon. Yeah, that’s my plan. Then, once I’m feeling human again, I’m gonna go down to Clancy’s and see if I can rustle me up some company.” 

  


Part of his brain wanted to know why the hell he was talking out loud when each syllable cracked his lips a little more and sent a metaphorical lit match down his gullet, but the rest of him knew and didn’t want to answer. That he was whistling past the graveyard was just too close to the literal truth to look at right now.

  


. . . 

  


They’d been on the road for hours that day, just a little over two months ago now (at least according to Hynek’s last calculation), broiling under the desert sun of southwest Utah on their way to Nevada, when he’d spotted the turn-off. 

  


“ _It wasn’t your fault_ ,” the Doc had told him later. “ _The map made it look like it would take a good hour off our journey._ ” 

  


“You said that later, Professor,” Quinn said to him now. “But at the time, you didn't want to leave the main highway. You’d wanted to find a pay phone to call Mimi cause she’d had a doctor’s appointment that afternoon. But I argued with you. I said if you waited till we got where we were going, you’d be able to have a nice long and leisurely call instead of having me pounding on the side of the booth after five minutes. Then you said you were hungry, and there was no way we were going to find a diner or even a hamburger stand on a road like that. ‘ _There’s a place up ahead_ ,’ you said. ‘ _We might not have another chance to eat for the next three hundred miles,’_ you said. Well, you were certainly right. We haven’t had a goddamn full meal in nine weeks. Or is it nine centuries? So, I’ll tell you what: You wake up and I’ll let you call the shots from here on in. Sound good?"

  


There was no answer from the man collapsed beside him. 

  


“I bet you know why I wanted to take that shortcut. You always see through me, much more than I ever expected you to. Hell, much more than I’ve ever wanted you to. And I still don’t know how you knew I want kids, but you got it right on the money. 

  


“Not that this time was much of a mystery, though. I took the shortcut because I was hot and cranky and pissed off. If the Air Force had flown us down here, we could’ve solved the case and been back home in the time it’s taken… _in the time it should have taken us_ to drive it. _Never mind_ that it could have been the Russkies up to something and every minute might have counted. _Never mind_ that someday it might actually be a flying saucer and therefore possibly the most profound discovery known to man.” He laughed hoarsely, “No, by all means, let’s save a few extra bucks and make’em drive across the goddamned country every week. As if this job wasn’t enough of a joke already. 

  


“But you know what I was really mad about? Because that sonovabitch Harding promoted this weaselly little tin-pot dictator lieutenant, who gives the men nothing but grief, over me. That little fucker just got a plum post in Washington handed to him by the man who’s been promising it to me for the last three years, and then Harding has the nerve to say it’s because ‘I’m too important where I am.’ Well, I hope the pencil-pushing little bastard chokes on it! But just look at the mess I got us into because I couldn’t keep my damn hot-head from getting the best of me. We’re stranded in the fucking 29th dimension because I was pissed at some jackass getting a promotion instead of me. A promotion, get this, that I wasn’t even sure I wanted. Ain’t that a fucking kick in the pants? That kind of stupidity could almost make a man cry.”

  


. . . 

  


Quinn had felt himself relaxing as they’d driven through the canyon. The day’s heat had relented as the afternoon progressed, and as the miles disappeared at a steady pace on the road that had no traffic but them he’d felt his nerves begin to settle. He didn't even notice when and where the cliffs gave way to other terrain. Lulled by fields of wheat flowing like waves on a sunlit sea, Quinn gradually increased their speed. While his partner used the dying light to do a few calculations, the Air Force captain watched contentedly as the fields gave way to Ponderosa pines. 

  


“Doc, stop squinting at that notebook. There’s not enough light.” 

  


“I’m trying to work out the angle of flight the second and third witness reported.” 

  


“Figure it out when we get there. Sit back and relax for once. Look at the sun setting over the lake.” 

  


Hynek’s head snapped up. “Lake? Quinn, there’s no lake around here!” 

  


“Oh, so I guess that’s just the world’s biggest puddle then,” he’d smirked, gesturing to the shimmering body of water to the left of them. 

  


“And the trees!” Hynek said, “Captain, Ponderosa pines shouldn’t exist in this part of the desert.” 

  


Quinn turned to look at Hynek. “Well, obviously they– “ 

  


“ _QUINN!_ ” Hynek shouted in warning. 

  


“ _Jesus!_ ” Quinn swore as he slammed on the brakes. The car squealed and they were both thrown forward. 

  


A wall of rock over twenty feet high blocked the highway. 

  


“Doc, you okay?” Hynek had been trembling and his breathing shaky, but he’d nodded. “Damn, that was close! And look at that thing; must have been one hell of a rock fall!” Quinn went on. “I guess we’re going to have to circle back and take the highway after all.” 

  


Hynek hadn’t answered because he’d already gotten out of the car and walked up to the wall. Quinn stuck his head out the window and yelled at his partner. “Geez, what’re you doing, Doc? We’re going be late enough as it is.”

  


“Captain, this isn’t a rock fall. This rock…” Hynek shook his head in disbelief. “It’s one solid piece. It’s part of the land around us.” 

  


“You’re telling me some idiot built this highway into the side of a giant rock? That’s nothing but a death-trap!” 

  


“I agree, but at this moment, I have no other explanation,” Hynek had said.

  


. . . 

  


“Hey, Professor, you never answered me about my offer, so I am going to take your silence as an affirmative. Consider it shook on. You wake up and I’ll start taking my orders from you.” 

  


_“I’d be satisfied if you’d simply listen once in a while,_ ” Quinn imagined his friend saying. 

  


“You gotta a deal, Doc,” he answered, heard only by the owner of the pair of unseen yellow eyes peering at him from the north. “In fact, I’d listen to a whole goddamn lecture right now. You could tell me about parallel universes again. Go on to your heart’s content on daughter and bubble and mathematical universes, and that Greek stuff…Atomism, was it? Or maybe that Schroeder…Shrover…Schrödinger…guy who gave the lecture in Dublin last year. Better yet, explain to me why it’s so weird we keep running into monsters and not people who look like us.” He glanced down to the unmoving Hynek and brushed the man’s hair back from his forehead before testing him for fever. “Gotta say, Doc, you’re being really uncooperative tonight.” Hynek was a little warm and that was worrying, but it didn’t feel as bad as before. _Of course_ , Quinn reminded himself, _that may be because it’s colder than a polar bear's tit out tonight._

  


. . . 

  


It was the lettering—if it could be called that—lit up in neon that first caused a small spike of fear to prick Quinn’s spinal cord. The sign, placed where it was above the entrance to the building, was obviously meant to be the name of what (to them) looked like a roadhouse, but he couldn’t read it. “Can you make out what it says?” he asked Hynek, who shook his head. 

  


Tall forms emerged from the building, but instead of welcoming the help, Quinn’s hand had reached for the gear shift and slipped it into reverse. Hynek, apparently sensing the same thing he did, didn’t even shoot him a questioning look. 

  


“Those squiggles, those symbols… it’s like no writing I’ve ever seen before,” Hynek had said with a hush. 

  


_It’s too fucking weird, that’s what it is_ , Quinn had thought. At any other time, he might have been embarrassed that he, an Air Force captain and war veteran, was spooked by a few weird lines on a stupid sign, but it didn’t even cross his mind at that moment. Every instinct, every intuition that had kept him alive throughout his career was blaring sirens and flashing red at him. Still, he hadn’t actually moved the car yet. 

  


“Captain…” Quinn heard the note of caution and suspicion in his partner’s voice and noted the tense, alert way the other man was holding himself and staring out at the approaching figures. It was when the nearest outline stepped into the light that Quinn rammed his foot down on the gas pedal and the car shot backwards. 

  


The face hadn’t been human.

  


. . . 

  


Hynek made a noise that was nearly a whimper and shook before weakly turning over in his sleep. “When was the last time you and I had a good talk, Doc?” Quinn asked the sleeping man. “We had some pretty damn fine ones back in the real world, I must say. I knew guys in the war that I would’ve laid down my life for without a thought, but somehow, I think I’m still closer to you. Did you know that?” 

  


Hynek made no answer. 

  


“You get close to a guy when you risk your lives together, when you’re working towards the same goal. I never thought I’d be close like that to anyone again after the war, but then you show up. Maybe it’s because we don’t just risk our lives together, we risk the weird. Hear me out, hear me out,” Quinn said as if the Doc had interrupted. “This job has changed my whole sense of reality. Bad enough I’ve learned that all the people I thought I could trust—Harding and Valentine and the Air Force itself—I find out have been screwing me around left, right, and center. Yeah, bad enough that, but then I’ve also got to face that all the things in the world I thought were impossible might actually be true. You know, that’s just too much at once. It really is. But you’re here, and you always seem to explain it. You’re usually full of shit, I know, but it still helps. 

  


“And we had talks. Big talks. Big life talks. Am I babbling? Well, what do you expect when you won’t carry the conversational ball, huh? But we did. I’m not sure I ever talked to anyone in my life as much as I’ve talked to you. 

  


“But the last couple of months…”

  


. . . 

  


None of the inhabitants they ever came across were human. The shape of their features, their height, their gait, the way their limbs joined their bodies—there was always something that showed them to be alien. Some would come close enough to human-looking to fool them for a moment, though, and to Quinn those were almost worse. Seeing a human-like form suddenly so distorted only emphasized the alien-ness to him, but the _absolute_ worst were the eyes. He tried to tell himself that it was only his own fear projecting itself onto whatever creature they happened to come across, but to him they all had the same inhuman quality, a sort of screaming emptiness that filled him with visions of dark voids and the banshee wailing of eternity. Meanwhile, he knew the strangeness of their appearances puzzled his partner, who would go on about parallel universes and wonder out loud how universes so close and so obviously containing the same physical constants as their own weren’t offshoots of theirs, possibly even containing altered versions of themselves. 

  


But those questions quickly faded into the background as the realities of survival imposed themselves on the pair. Water was the first thing to run out, then food and gas. When that happened, they’d drive down the ‘main’ highway and, if their current universe was compatible enough to have the things they needed, they’d steal what they could. Both were ashamed by that, but they were never able to pass as locals, not even for the few minutes necessary to purchase anything, so that was out even if they had had usable currency. 

  


And they were almost always chased. Not for stealing, though that happened too. It seemed the locals only had to catch sight of them before they would leap into bizarre vehicles—five wheels, three wheels, one large headlight, a hundred tiny headlights like the eyes of bugs—and pursue the pair till they would suddenly disappear behind them, or, as they quickly figured out, until they themselves shifted to the next universe. And when the two of them weren’t being chased, it was only because wherever they had ended up wasn’t inhabited. Those worlds were terrifying in their own ways, and the vast, barren desolation seemed to seep into Quinn’s bones. 

  


By universe ten, everything was already taking a deep toll on the pair. The stress of the whole situation quickly stripped their current circumstances down to the barest essentials: try the road, figure out where they were, get supplies, camp for the night, repeat. There was no time, no energy for speaking. The routine and resulting boredom took over, but more than that was the abnormal state of this new life in general. Joined by their plight and their isolation and the soul-draining need to adjust almost daily to being stranded in a world not their own, they were each other’s only connection to home and humanity, and indeed, to anything at all even remotely familiar.

  


But, at the same time, they were growing worn down and their nerves frazzled. Panic grew in each like a giant gas bubble pressing against their chests and making it hard to breathe, but it was a panic that had no words, and then, even when it did, they still could not bring themselves to reveal it yet, for it they voiced it, then it would be real. For both, it got to the point where they didn’t even want to open their mouths for fear that the agonizing idea of never getting home again, of this horrific, eternal deja-vu-like repetition becoming their entire lives, might burst out. 

  


So they didn’t talk, they just went on.

  


. . . 

  


When the Doc’s teeth began to chatter, that was Quinn’s signal. As far as he could tell, this universe was uninhabited, so keeping watch felt like less and less of a priority for the Air Force captain as the hours limped on. The desert got cold at night and they had long since lost their inherent awkwardness at sharing a blanket—not that the Doc was awake to complain in any case—so Quinn positioned himself so that he was spooning against Hynek’s back. 

  


Something Michael Quinn had never admitted to anyone, not even to the women he grew involved with, was that he liked the feeling of people’s sides under his hands, especially the curve of the torso from just under the arm to the waist or the hips. For him, the way an arm could sinuously be wrapped around a narrow waist to draw a lover to you in a gesture both sexy and sweet was a secret pleasure. Not to mention there was the enticing way a hand, placed against a side, could guide a partner in dancing while at the same time reveling in the presence of their solidity, the warm physicality of their being, their _realness_ in that moment, or the deep, over-riding comfort of embracing someone from behind and wrapping your arms tightly about their chest. 

  


Quinn had never thought to find these same pleasures with a man, but ever since that first night when he and Allen had had to share the blanket they’d found in the trunk, he’d been growing increasingly jumpy to find that he had. Was it sexual? He couldn’t tell. He’d had a few clandestine and desperate experiences with men in the past, mostly during the war and mostly for comfort (he thought); one-night stands whose brevity had never been regretted. And he was genuinely–and occasionally even overpoweringly—attracted to women. So just what in the Sam hell was going on? 

  


It wasn’t until universe 48 that Quinn finally had some inkling of his feelings towards his friend.

  


. . . 

  


The local food never seemed to agree with them but had at least been edible in nearly every universe. Still, they had gotten into the habit of testing anything they ate or drank by one of them taking in a minuscule amount and then waiting to see the results. It was a chore they alternated back and forth, and in universe 48, it had been the Doc’s turn. 

  


“I can’t say much for the colour,” Quinn commented. “You sure you don’t want to go with what we’ve got left from the last place?” 

  


Hynek looked unsure, but in the end, he shook his head. “What if the next place has no food at all?” That had happened a few times, and once they’d even gone through three shifts before they’d found sustenance again. The professor gingerly placed the tiny grey and yellow piece in his mouth and swallowed. 

  


The results were immediate. It hardly seemed like Hynek had choked the piece down before he let out a strangling sound and convulsed violently, bringing up the most disgusting mass of stuff Quinn had ever seen in in a painful projectile. And it came again and again and again. It didn’t stop. Hynek was helpless on his hands and knees while Quinn clutched him to his side to steady him, one hand wrapped around the sick man’s back and the other holding the man’s forehead. He felt the cold sweat break out on Hynek’s skin and saw the blood visibly drain from the Doc’s face. “It’s okay, you’re gonna by okay,” Quinn kept repeating, but when a brief pause allowed him to see Hynek’s wide eyes—eyes that seemed to beg, “ _Am I going to die like this?_ ”—something in Quinn nearly broke. 

  


By Quinn’s watch, the whole ordeal had gone on for only twenty minutes, but that was a long time for anyone to be so continuously sick. When it was done, Hynek was gasping for air and barely conscious, so Quinn set him down in a sitting position in the nearest shade (this universe luckily had a few trees) and went back to the car for all the water they had left. He also grabbed the leftover sweet blobbish thing from the last universe. The only water container they had was an old soda bottle without a cap, so he set it between his legs and then took the blob, which they’d been calling a fritter, and brushed off some of what might have been sugar crystals covering the thing down through the top of the bottle. He knew from suffering dehydration once during the war that water with sugar could help someone who’d lost too much fluid. Hynek had been too weak to sit up or hold the bottle himself, so Quinn had had to prop the other man up against him and help him hold the bottle to his lips. That’s when he noticed how hard Hynek’s heart was beating, and more frighteningly, that its rhythm seemed erratic. _Doc had scarlet fever when he was a kid_ , Quinn remembered. _That can weaken a heart or cause problems later on. And so can severe dehydration_. 

  


For the rest of that day and night, Quinn had held on to Hynek and soothed the sick man’s tremors, all the time wondering what was going to happen if he eventually had to travel this road alone. And that’s when he realized that he loved this man. He didn’t know if it was romantic love (or perhaps he wasn't ready to admit it to himself) but he knew his life would be poorer if he ever lost his friend. So Michael Quinn held on tight to Allen Hynek as if he could hold the other man in this world.

  


. . . 

  


Hynek recovered to some degree and by his calculations in universe 65, it had been roughly three weeks since he’d been ill. Yet Quinn couldn’t help but notice that Hynek had been failing in some way ever since then. The man had been so knocked out by his attack that he’d slept almost entirely through universes 49 and 50, only waking when Quinn forced water on him and ordered him to drink, and it wasn’t until universe 53 that he would look at food again, even though he must have been starving. Proof of how bad it had been for Hynek showed up within a day, when dark bruises appeared on his torso around his ribs. When he finally awoke, he complained of pain there and they speculated he’d either bruised a rib or two or suffered some kind of muscle sprain from the force of his vomiting. 

  


And, while they’d both been losing weight, the process had sped up for the professor in the last few weeks. Quinn had teased him at first, saying it was lucky he wore suspenders, or he’d be flashing every being in each universe and getting himself thrown into alien jail. 

  


“Strangely, the wearing of clothing seems to be a common attribute in the places we’ve seen,” Hynek replied as he wrote this new observation down in his notebook. “I think only universe 15 possessed inhabitants who went nude.” 

  


Quinn was cooking up breakfast for them—what he called a UFO (an _unidentified fried object_ )—in a stolen pan. “That the one with the seven-foot-tall, elephant-hide moth-men?” 

  


“Uh…yes, I suppose that’s as good a description as any.” 

  


In any case, they both carried on with the pretense that Hynek was still an energetically curious scientist, and not the grey-faced husk he looked like. They ignored the intermittent fevers (though the word ‘pancreatitis’ would pop into Quinn’s head with each instance, a condition he’d overheard the doctors talking about when he’d been treated for dehydration), the pain in Hynek's sides and back, the fatigue, and the times when Doc would seem less than lucid, as if stuck between sleeping and wakefulness. 

  


But in the last universe—the hottest yet—Hynek had collapsed and gone into a seizure. It had been in the middle of the night, when they’d been pilfering from what could only be considered a grocery store, and Hynek's jerking spasms had set off an alarm of some kind. Dropping all the food he’d had in his arms, Quinn had rushed over, thrown the downed man over his shoulder, and raced for the car. The residents (gangly, cricket-shaped forms in the dark) poured out onto the streets as the two men tore away in the Packard and then were in quick pursuit behind them. All the way back to the canyon, Quinn tried to shake them, but they came on relentlessly. Only feet from the giant rock wall that blocked the off-road in every universe, Quinn sharply whipped the wheel around and drove them out onto the rough terrain. It made for a bumpy ride, but they shifted again before the aliens could follow.

  


. . . 

  


They’d been here two days and Doc had been in and out of delirium for most of that time. Quinn had done his best, finding water in at least in some of the surrounding cacti, but they were both growing weaker. 

  


“One last shot, huh, Doc? We’ll load up at daybreak and head towards the rock wall,” Quinn murmured pointlessly to his companion. He pulled Hynek in closer.

  


_And maybe we won’t bothering stopping once we get to it, was what he didn’t say._

  


_Quick and easy_.

  


. . .

  


When Quinn next woke, however, it was to see a familiar and skeptical face staring down at him. “Sir?” 

  


“Rest easy, Captain,” Harding told him and Quinn noticed one side of the general’s mouth was quirked, which was about as effusive as the man ever got when he was happy about something. 

  


“The Doc?” 

  


“Over there,” the general said, nodding towards a bed to Quinn’s right. “He hasn’t woken up yet, but the doctors are hopeful. His wife’s on her way down, by the way. You can deal with her, can’t you?” 

  


“Yessir,” Quinn assured him happily. _Can you beat that? Looks like we made it back to Kansas after all, Doc._

**Author's Note:**

> I nearly didn't include that last section. I was going to end it after "Quick and easy," but damnit, I wanted a happy ending. So if it feels lame and tacked on, that's why, but I still don't regret it.


End file.
